The first joint biography of one of rock 'n' roll's greatest song writing teams, Hitmakers Inc. explores the private lives and public triumphs of lyricist Doc Pomus and composer Mort Shuman. Between 1958 and 1965, usually working out of Manhattan's famous Brill Building, they wrote some 500 teen anthems and timeless ballads for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, The Drifters, Bobby Darin, Del Shannon and Andy Williams among others. Polio-stricken ex-blues shouter Pomus always attracted the press coverage, but after the duo split junior partner Shuman proved the more colourful of the two, acting in films, writing musicals, joining the post-Beatles British beat boom and eventually becoming a chart-topping singer-composer in his own right in - of all places - France. The story of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, writing together and individually, reveals a personal dynamic that was both warm and difficult but which at its height produced songs like 'Teenager In Love', 'Save The Last Dance For Me', 'Surrender', 'Little Sister', '(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame' , 'This Magic Moment' and 'Lonely Avenue'.

Music scholarship has been rethinking its understanding of Franz Schubert and his work. How might our modern aesthetic values and historical knowledge of Schubert's life affect how we interpret his music? Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation demonstrates how updated analysis of Schubert and his instrumental works reveals expressive meaning. In six chapters, each devoted to one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch explores alternate forms of unity and coherence, offers critical assessments of biographical and intertextual influence, investigates narrative, and addresses the gendering of the composer and his music. Rusch's comparative analyses and interpretations address four significant areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his use of chromaticism, his unique forms, the impact of events in his own life, and the influence of Beethoven. Drawing from a range of philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical, and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into the poetics of contemporary analysis of Schubert's instrumental music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.

From Gilbert and Sullivan to Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Julie Andrews to Hugh Jackman, from Half a Sixpence to Matilda, Pick a Pocket Or Two is the story of the British musical: where it began and how it developed. In Pick a Pocket Or Two, acclaimed author Ethan Mordden brings his wit and wisdom to bear in telling the full history of the British musical, from The Beggar's Opera (1728) to the present, with an interest in isolating the unique qualities of the form and its influence on the American model. To place a very broad generalization, the American musical is regarded as largely about ambition fulfilled, whereas the British musical is about social order. Oklahoma!'s Curly wins the heart of the farmer Laurey-or, in other words, the cowboy becomes a landowner, establishing a truce between the freelancers on horseback and the ruling class. Half a Sixpence, on the other hand, finds a working-class boy coming into a fortune and losing it to fancy Dans, whereupon he is reunited with his working-class sweetheart, his modest place in the social order affirmed. Anecdotal and evincing a strong point of view, the book covers not only the shows and their authors but the personalities as well-W. S. Gilbert trying out his stagings on a toy theatre, Ivor Novello going to jail for abusing wartime gas rationing during World War II, fabled producer C. B. Cochran coming to a most shocking demise for a man whose very name meant "classy, carefree entertainment." Unabashedly opinionated and an excellent stylist, author Ethan Mordden provokes as much as he pleases. Mordden is the preeminent historian of the form, and his book will be required reading for readers of all walks, from the most casual of musical theater goers to musical theater buffs to students and scholars of the form.

Why has Serge Gainsbourg crossed over to the English-speaking world when so many of his contemporaries have remained largely confined to the Francosphere? What is it about this unshaven provocateur that so appeals to us? And who was the real Serge Gainsbourg anyway? Was he the sensitive seducer and songwriting colossus of the 60s and 70s? Was he Lucien Ginsburg, the son of Russian Jewish refugees who had to wear a yellow star during the Nazi Occupation of Paris? Or was he Gainsbarre, the deplorable, attention-seeking drunk who shamelessly propositioned Whitney Houston on live TV? Gainsbourg s cult has only grown since his death in 1991, and Histoire de Melody Nelson is now regarded as a classic in France and internationally. The 1971 album had only sold eighty thousand copies by 1986 when it finally went gold fifteen years after its release; its canonical elevation is a remarkable story, and there are many more remarkable stories attached to all of Gainsbourg s genre-defying, transgressive long-players. In Relax Baby Be Cool, writer Jeremy Allen takes each studio album in turn while exploring themes pertinent to Gainsbourg s life and music: jazz, performance, provocation, appropriation, postmodernism, aesthetics, metamorphosis, muses, Nazis, film and TV, Surrealism, fame, and decline. French pop music is more popular than it s been since the mid-90s, when the French touch was breaking. Gainsbourg s influence has also been huge on alternative music: from Pulp to Massive Attack, De La Soul to Danger Mouse, Black Grape to Iggy Pop, Luke Vibert to Die Antwoord, Air to Kylie Minogue. This book is full of new interviews from people who knew him, as well as younger artists who ve discovered him long after his death. Contributors include Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jacqueline Ginsburg (Gainsbourg s sister), Anna Karina, Mike Patton, Etienne Daho, Sly Dunbar, Alan Hawkshaw, Alan Parker, Jean-Claude Vannier, Tony Frank, Tony Allen, Mick Harvey, Bertrand Burgalat, Acid Arab, Jehnny Beth, Alain Chamfort, Metronomy, David Holmes, Blonde Redhead, Air, Sparks, Will Oldham, and many more.

Bluegrass Ambassadors is the first book-length study of the McLain Family Band, which has spread the gospel of bluegrass for more than fifty years. Rooted in bluegrass but also collaborating with classical composers and performing folk, jazz, gospel, and even marches, the band traveled to sixty-two foreign countries in the 1970s under the auspices of the State Department. The band's verve and joyful approach to its art perfectly suited its ambassadorial role. After retiring as full-time performers, most members of the group became educators, with patriarch Raymond K. McLain's work at Berea College playing a particularly important role in bringing bluegrass to the higher education curriculum. Interpreting the band's diverse repertoire as both a source of its popularity and a reason for its exclusion from the bluegrass pantheon, Paul Jenkins advances subtle arguments about genre, criticism, and audience. Bluegrass Ambassadors analyzes the McLains' compositions, recordings, and performances, and features a complete discography.

Harry Styles is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor. Following his elimination early on, he was brought back to join the boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Styles released his self-titled debut solo album through Columbia Records in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US, and became one of the world's top-ten best-selling albums of the year. Its lead single, "Sign of the Times," topped the UK Singles Chart. Styles' second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted a top the US Billboard 200 with the biggest first-week sales by an English male artist in history, and was listed among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." Throughout his career, Styles has earned several accolades, including a Brit Award, a Grammy, an American Music Award, two ARIA Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Award.

Mozart was fascinated, amused, aroused, hurt, and betrayed by women. He loved and respected them, composed for them, performed with them. This unique biography looks at his interaction with each, starting with his family (his mother, Maria Anna and beloved and talented sister, Nannerl), and his marriage (which brought his 'other family', the Weber sisters). His relationships with his artists are examined, in particular those of his operas, through whose characters Mozart gave voice to the emotions of women who were, like his entire female acquaintance, restrained by the conventions and structures of eighteenth-century society. This is their story as well as his -- and shows once again that a great part of the composer's genius was in his understanding and musical expression of human nature. Evocative and beautifully written, Mozart's Women illuminates the music, the man, and above all the women who inspired him. 'Jane Glover has pulled off a coup des livres with her fresh take on Mozart's life and work' Sunday Telegraph 'Readable, informative and moving...Her passion for the music shines through this touching, vividly told story' Sunday Times

This annotated bibliography uncovers the wealth of resources available on the life and music of John Cage, one of the most influential and fascinating composers of the twentieth-century. The guide will focus on documentary studies, archival resources, scholarly research, and autobiographical materials, and place the composer and his work in a larger context of postmodern philosophy, art and theater movements, and contemporary politics. It will support emerging scholarship and inquiry for future research on Cage, with carefully selected sources and useful annotations.

Complicated Game offers a unique insight into the work of one of Britain's most original and influential songwriters-and an unprecedentedly revealing and instructive guide to how songs and records are made. Developed from a series of interviews conducted over many months, this fascinating book explores in detail some thirty XTC songs-including well-known singles such as 'Senses Working Overtime' and the controversial 'Dear God'-from throughout the group's thirty-year career. It casts new light on the writing of lyrics, the construction of melodies and arrangements, the process of recording, and the workings of the?music industry. But it is also filled with anecdotes about Partridge, his XTC bandmates, and their adventures around the world, all told with the songwriter's legendary humour. The book also includes pages from Partridge's songwriting notebooks and reproductions of his original artwork designs, as well as a guide to Andy Partridge's Swindon and a foreword by Steven Wilson, the guitarist, songwriter, and record producer best known as the founder and leader of Porcupine Tree.

This book studies George Crumb's Winds of Destiny (2004) and Black Angels (1970) as artefacts of collective memory and cultural trauma. It situates these two pieces in Crumb's output and unpacks the complex methodologies needed to understand these pieces as contributions and challenges to traditional narratives of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. This book shows how this association began and how it endures through connections to iconic Vietnam War media, including films and books. Together these analyses show the legacy of trauma in American collective memory, which is in a continuous crisis. \This book will be of interest to students of contemporary American music, American studies, and memory studies. It benefits readers by newly situating Crumb's music within these three fields of study.

"Terry was everywhere in the '60s - he knew everything and everyone that was happening" - Keith Richards Terry O'Neill (1938-2019) was one of the world's most celebrated and collected photographers. No one captured the front line of fame so broadly - and for so long. Terry O'Neill's Rock 'n' Roll Album contains some of the most famous and powerful music photographs of all time. At the same time, the book includes many intimate personal photos taken 'behind the scenes' and at private functions. Terry O'Neill photographed the giants of the music world - both on and off-stage. For more than fifty years he captured those on the front line of fame in public and in private. David Bowie, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse, Dean Martin, The Who, Janis Joplin, AC/DC, Eric Clapton, Sammy Davis Jnr., The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Berry and The Beatles - to name only a few. O'Neill spent more than 30 years photographing Frank Sinatra as his personal photographer, with unprecedented access to the star. He took some of the earliest known photographs of The Beatles, and then forged a lifetime relationship with members of the band that allowed him to photograph their weddings and other private moments. It is this contrast between public and private that makes Terry O'Neill's Rock 'n' Roll Album such a powerful document. Without a doubt, Terry O'Neill's work comprises a vital chronicle of rock 'n' roll history. To any fan of music or photography, this book will be a must-buy. "Trusted by the stars to make them look good, O'Neill has captured the icons of music for over half a century... Terry O'Neill's Rock 'N' Roll Album, collects a wealth of private moments and memories captured for eternity, with the likes of David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse and even Elvis Presley all the subject of O'Neill's immaculately placed lens. A life in pictures, a legacy in print. Pay heed to history!" - Simon Harper, Clash Magazine

Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver! He also wrote the famous songs Living Doll (Cliff Richard) and From Russia With Love (Matt Munroe).He was a millionaire aged thirty in the Sixties, bankrupt in the Seventies and died in 1999.In this first revealing biography, the authors gained exclusive access to Bart's personal archives - his unfinished autobiography, his letters and scrapbooks. They detail how he signed away the rights to Oliver! to finance his new musical Twang - based on Robin Hood - which flopped badly in the theatre. Reveal how his heavy drinking led to diabetes and how he died in 1999 aged 69 from liver cancer. They have interviewed his personal secretaries, friends, family, counsellors and many of the performers, musicians and producers who worked with him. Interviewees include Rocky Horror's Richard O'Brien and actors Dudley Sutton and Nigel Planer.

A beautifully written exploration of the world of Edwardian folk music, and its influence on the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams In January 1905 the young Vaughan Williams, not yet one of England's most famous composers, visited Norfolk to find folk songs 'from the mouths of the singers'. An old fisherman, James 'Duggie' Carter, performed 'The Captain's Apprentice', a brutal tale of torture sung to the most beautiful tune the young composer had ever heard. With this transformational moment at its heart, the book traces the contrasting lives of the well-to-do composer and a forgotten cabin boy who died at sea, and brings fresh perspectives on folk-song collectors, the singers and their songs. ***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4*** 'A quirky, fascinating read. Davison excels in evoking English landscapes' Sunday Times 'Animated, entertaining... Presenting a richly complex picture of a subject that can all too easily be shrouded in a sentimental haze' Daily Telegraph

Winner of the 2022 Vincent H. Duckles Award, Music Library Association John Adams: A Research and Information Guide offers the first comprehensive guide to the musical works and literature of one of the leading American composers of our time. The research guide catalogs and summarizes materials relating to Adams's work, providing detailed annotated bibliographic entries for both primary and secondary sources. Covering writings by and interviews with Adams, books, journal articles and book chapters, newspaper articles and reviews, dissertations, video recordings, and other sources, the guide also contains a chronology of Adams's life, a discography, and a list of compositions. Robust indexes enable researchers to easily locate sources by author, composition, or subject. This volume is a major reference tool for all those interested in Adams and his music, and a valuable resource for students and researchers of minimalism, contemporary American music, and twentieth-century music more broadly.

The Work is a book of lyrics and illustrations by the late Scott Hutchison, lyricist, vocalist and songwriter of Frightened Rabbit. This paperback follows the sold-out limited hardback edition and presents the band's complete lyrics (including B-sides and rarities) with handwritten excerpts by Scott, alongside his illustrations. The book is meant both as a celebration of and tribute to Scott's unbridled creativity. It aims to fulfil his wishes by being the book that he wanted to create and had spoken of creating before his death. Readers are advised that The Work includes content about topics that some may find upsetting, including references to suicide. "Seeing this book come to life has been something of a bittersweet experience. Reading the lyrics without music really brings home the stark reality of what Scott was going through and at the same time highlights the talent of someone who I consider to be one of the best songwriters in the world. This would've been a different release had Scott been involved but we all felt it was important that his lyrics be celebrated and given the spotlight they deserve. As Scott has said, these words were always meant to be accompanied by music, but the impact of digesting them without is no less great. Pick up this book of words, hold it, share it and immerse yourself in the world Scott created by opening not only his heart but his whole soul to the world." Grant Hutchison (Scott's brother and drummer of Frightened Rabbit)

This Element explores the life and work of Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), as a composer, violinist, pianist and author. She lived a remarkable life in Poland, navigating the complex world of Polish communist society and Soviet dominance after the Second World War, and brought Polish music to wider European attention. The Element describes the historical context of her life, her major achievements, and the language and development of her compositions, which attracted notable interest in Polish musical life. She wrote a wide range of pieces, making a significant contribution to the string repertoire, with important String Quartets and violin works. In her sixty years she achieved impressive triumphs as a women composer, served the Polish Composers Union and often judged major international competitions.

It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.

Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous--the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994). The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others. With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.

In Please Please Tell Me Now, bestselling rock biographer Stephen Davis tells the story of Duran Duran, the quintessential band of the 1980s. Their pretty boy looks made them the stars of fledgling MTV, but it was their brilliant musicianship that led to a string of number one hits. By the end of the decade, they had sold 60 million albums; today, they've sold over 100 million albums-and counting. Davis traces their roots to the austere 1970s British malaise that spawned both the Sex Pistols and Duran Duran-two seemingly opposite music extremes. Handsome, British, and young, it was Duran Duran that headlined Live Aid, not Bob Dylan or Led Zeppelin. The band moved in the most glamorous circles: Nick Rhodes became close with Andy Warhol, Simon LeBon with Princess Diana, and John Taylor dated quintessential British bad girl Amanda De Cadanet. With timeless hits like "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Girls on Film," "Rio," "Save a Prayer," and the bestselling James Bond theme in the series' history, "A View to Kill," Duran Duran has cemented its legacy in the pop pantheon-and with a new album and a worldwide tour on the way, they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Featuring exclusive interviews with the band and never-before-published photos from personal archives, Please Please Tell Me Now offers a definitive account of one of the last untold sagas in rock and roll history-a treat for diehard fans, new admirers, and music lovers of any age.

This book asks what theological messages theologically educated Catholics in late-eighteenth-century Prague might have perceived in Mozart's late opera seria La clemenza di Tito. The book's thesis is two-fold: first, that Catholics might have heard the opera's advocacy of enlightened absolutism as a celebration of a distinctly Catholic understanding of political governance; and second, that they might have found in the opera a metaphor for the relationship between a gracious God and humanity caught up in sin, expressed as sexual concupiscence, pride, and lust for power. The book develops its interpretation of the opera through narrative character analyses of the main protagonists, an examination of their dramatic development, and by paying attention to the biblical and theological associations they may have evoked in a Catholic audience. The book is geared towards academic readers interested in opera, theologians, historians, and those who work at the intersection of theology and the arts. It contributes to a better understanding of the theological implications of Mozart's operatic work.

The New York Times bestseller and the definitive portrait of Kurt Cobain--as relevant as ever, as we remember the impact of Cobain on our culture twenty-five years after his death--now with a new preface and an additional final chapter from acclaimed author Charles R. Cross. It has been twenty-five years since Kurt Cobain died by his own hand in April 1994; it was an act of will that typified his short, angry, inspired life. Veteran music journalist Charles R. Cross fuses his intimate knowledge of the Seattle music scene with his deep compassion for his subject in this extraordinary story of artistic brilliance and the pain that extinguished it. Based on more than four hundred interviews; four years of research; exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries, lyrics, and family photos; and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobain's life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, success, and the adulation of a generation. Charles Cross has written a new preface for this edition, giving readers context for the time in which the book was written, six years after Kurt's death, and reminding everyone how fresh that cultural experience was when the interviews for the book were done. The new final chapter will update the story since, regarding investigations into Cobain's death, Nirvana's induction into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, and how their place in rock history has only risen over the decades.